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Caller Claims Capitalism is Slavery

RUSH: Kalamazoo, Michigan, next on Open Line Friday. Remember no rules: You get to talk about whatever you want to talk about on Friday. Doesn't have to be anything I care about. Fred, I'm glad you called. Welcome to the program, sir.

CALLER: Hey, thank you, Rush. Thanks for taking my call from WKMI in Kalamazoo. What my comment is is that I think that capitalism is no more than a form of slavery; that entrepreneurs are the ones that create jobs, and once they get to a point of being millionaires or multimillionaires they withdraw from the economy. So there is no... There's no... The tax breaks that millionaires get, there is no growth in that. The only growth they do is anywhere in their pocketbooks. Entrepreneurs, actually, create these jobs.

RUSH: Wait a minute. I want to walk through this. I want you to walk me through the stages of this that you believe. First off, when you say that capitalism... Creates slaves, is that what you said?

CALLER: Yes, that's correct.

RUSH: A form of slavery?

CALLER: Yep, it's a form of slavery.

RUSH: Okay, entrepreneurs start out, they create jobs. But then at some point they become millionaires, then what happens?

CALLER: Then they start withdrawing from the economy. There's no more growth in job growth, so giving multimillionaires a break --

RUSH: Give me an example, because I need one. Really, now, I don't understand. Entrepreneur A starts a widget business?

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: After a certain amount of time the widget business makes him a millionaire, and then what does he do?

CALLER: Then it becomes...starts to become Self. They get absorbed in themselves and then they -- instead of thinking about the company or the organization, they -- start thinking about Self, and when you start thinking about Self, there's no more growth.

RUSH: No.

CALLER: So we can throw tax breaks at millionaires and billionaires all we want and there's not even a trickle-down economics to go along with it.

RUSH: Oh, but there is! Where does the millionaire put his money?

CALLER: Stock market.

RUSH: Puts it...

CALLER: For growth.

RUSH: Well, stock market, bank, he puts it in a lot of places. What happens to it there?

CALLER: That money is supposed to be sent down to the widget guy, but it's not working.

RUSH: You mean the employee? You mean the employee?

CALLER: No, to the widget business, but the widget business, the guy that the entrepreneur...

RUSH: Well, the widget business is still operating even though the millionaire guy has... Does he just shut down the widget business -- I'm trying to understand -- and fire all the employees after he becomes a millionaire?

CALLER: No. He just doesn't grow the business anymore. He's got what he wants.

RUSH: So all he was out for was the money and when he gets the money he just shuts the business down and puts all those people on the unemployment line?

CALLER: No, no. He becomes Self. I didn't say the widget business went out of business.

RUSH: Well, then --

CALLER: He'll still run it, it just doesn't grow anymore, and then --

RUSH: Well, can you give me an example of this? Company name. Give me an example of a company name.

CALLER: Okay, a company name would be Am Fab. (bursts out laughing) Am Fab was a local overbed maker in town.

RUSH: What was the name of the company?

CALLER: Am Fab. A-m F-a-b.

RUSH: All right.

CALLER: It was owned by the Bissell Corporation. We made overbed tables all over the country -- United States, local -- and we had decent profit going. We had decent medical benefits --

RUSH: I see now.

CALLER: -- and eventually to get the to a point where --

RUSH: I see.

CALLER: -- the 10% margin that the company -- that the owner -- wanted to make, he no longer considered that enough and took the company and took it overseas, basically.

RUSH: What is wrong...?

CALLER: That's how I feel about it.

RUSH: What is wrong with a company not growing? I don't agree with any aspect of your premise, but I just gotta ask: What's wrong with a company not growing? It's still employing people; it still has value. There are people still employed and earning money.

CALLER: Right, but while the cost of living's going up, he sold his people down so that way self can be self-absorbed. He gets to be fulfilled, but his employees don't.

RUSH: I don't... Where did you learn this? This is the most... I have yet to hear this. This is the first time I have heard this explanation of capitalism and rich people and why they're really evil: Once they get what they want, they quit and their employees just die.

CALLER: It just levels off, Rush, and it's unnatural.

RUSH: No, no, no, no, no. This is the point. It doesn't!

CALLER: Yep.

RUSH: Companies continue to grow. They are sometimes bought up by other companies. Others go out of business because they fail for whatever reason, but nothing is static! Everything about capitalism is dynamic!

CALLER: No. Everything was -- if everything was capitalist --

RUSH: Stagnation only occurs in socialism.

CALLER: No.

RUSH: Stagnation only occurs in liberalism. Stagnation only occurs where entrepreneurism is not allowed!

CALLER: Well, if you're saying that --

RUSH: Where did you learn this? This is pathetic.

CALLER: -- you're basing that on the socialism model --

RUSH: You are wounding me.

CALLER: -- there's no cost of living in socialism. If you add cost of living into capitalism, it's no more than slavery.

RUSH: Oh, come on! You sound like Spike Lee who claims that LeBron James was a victim of slavery when he left the Cleveland Cavaliers for the Miami Heat for $15 million.

CALLER: No, he was a free agent.

RUSH: They simply stopped growing the Cleveland Cavaliers. The owner stopped trying to win. Poor old LeBron James had nowhere to go but the Miami Heat for $15 million. There's Spike Lee calling it slavery. You have really got to get hold of yourself. You have really gotta start examining yourself. You can't possibly believe what you have just said to me here. You cannot -- intellectually you cannot -- believe that capitalism creates slavery! The slavery in this world is born of tyranny, totalitarianism: Cuba, Soviet Union, China, not here. We used to be the essence, the engine of freedom, and it is capitalism that promotes that.

Now, take your sad-sack employees at this mythical corporation where the owner finally gets his and says, "All right, to heck with it! I'm quitting." Well, what do the employees do? Let them become entrepreneurs. Some of them are gonna sit there and feel sorry for themselves, others are gonna ask the government for help, and others are gonna say, "You know what? I'm gonna build on this." Capitalism allows for the up-flow of anybody who wants to try. Socialism makes everybody a slave. Socialism makes everybody the same. Nameless! Nothing but a number.

Whoa! Capitalism slavery? The rich simply suck everything they want out of the company and then they quit? That's what Obama thinks. "They just can't sit there and count their money. We just can't let the rich sit there and count their money." I don't know who's educated you, and I don't know who's informed you, but you ought to file suit, because you have been lied to. You have been maleducated and misinformed to the point... I don't know what kind of damage this has done to you throughout your life, but I'll guarantee you: You have a lot more potential than somebody ever told you you had. You have felt yourself a prisoner of the freest system ever devised by man for economic prosperity.

I am sadly disappointed in you, sir.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: You know, the history of the world (and we've talked about this on this program) is slavery, bondage, tyranny, until we were freed by capitalism. It's the whole notion of American exceptionalism. People wonder what is meant by American exceptionalism. It's not that we're better people than anybody else. It's not that we're special. It's not that our DNA makes us superior beings. It is that we are the exception to the history of the world. We are free. We have the ability to be the best we can be based on our desire. Some of us want to be slothful, some of us want to be lazy, some of us want to be stupid, some of us want to be dumb.

Some of us want to be great. We can be whatever we want to be. The problem with that is that the slothful and the purposefully lazy then get jealous and angry and envious of those who are not slothful and lazy and want a percentage, and claim that what they normally would have to themselves has been stolen. But look at me. If this previous caller's correct, I would have quit this show in 1993, '94. Well, he said, "You make your million and then you quit and go clip coupons." I'm an entrepreneur. I bucked the trend.

I did something every Wizard of Smart in this business said couldn't be done. They wished me well, don't misunderstand. They said, "If you're gonna do a syndicated radio show, you gotta do it at night. It will never work in the middle of the day. We've all tried it." Yeah, but you didn't try it with me. So everybody was stunned, all the Wizards of Smart and experts. Then it worked, and by this guy's thinking I shoulda quit 18 years ago and left you, Snerdley, and you Dawn just sitting here slaving away with whoever the replacement host would be. You know, personally, folks, this is the difference:

I would much rather see money in the hands of people than in the hands of politicians. That's what it really boils down to. Why in the world do we think money -- gobs and oodles of money -- in the hands of elected officials is gonna end up being more fair and equitable than it is if it's in the hands of people? Politicians squander wealth. The rich, no matter how lazy they are -- and I don't care what you think -- the one thing the rich don't do is squander their money. I'll tell you something else about the rich: You know, the latest year for which there is income tax data just came out is 2008, and the number was 38%.

The top 1% of income earners paid 38% of all taxes, and a lot of people learned for the first time that top 1% is not a static group of people. People move in and out of that 1% all the time. You're not rich forever. Some people are but some people lose it all. I remember when I moved here to Palm Beach I met a man who had made and lost a billion dollars twice. He was a war hero. He gambled on some investments that didn't work out and said, "Okay, well, I'll just start again." He made and lost a billion dollars twice. The point is that just because you're born poor doesn't mean you stay poor.

Just because you're born rich doesn't mean you stay that way. People move in and out of these income quintiles with a lot of fluidity, but the rich don't squander their money. Something useful always gets done with it. This is why this notion of the rich "checking out" is all part of class envy and hatred for achievers and seeing the need to punish them, and as I say: We lost the education infrastructure in this country a hundred years ago, and that guy who called is a direct result of having lost the education institutions at all levels.